For the fifth consecutive year, Jonathan Coulton is organizing the JoCo Cruise Crazy extravaganza. From 31 January to 8 February, 2015, you can take a Caribbean cruise with on-board musical and comedy performances by the likes of The Both (Aimee Mann & Ted Leo), Rhea Butcher, Cameron Esposito, Jean Grae, Paul and Storm, and of course Jonathan Coulton himself. This year John Roderick will join the cruise as one of the Featured Guests, who will not have a main stage performance of their own, but will host events, hold Office Hours and meetups, and will very likely appear as guests during other performers’ shows and/or other Main Stage events.

Alone & TogetherAlone & Together is a unique short tour where John Roderick will join Ryan Miller (Guster), Matthew Caws (Nada Surf), Eric D. Johnson (Fruit Bats) and The Parkington Sisters for some wonderfully intimate shows. For the occasion some incredible historic locations will be playing host to these shows: the Dreamland Theatre in Nantucket (8 and 9 July), and Union Chapel (11 July) and the Old Whaling Church (12 July) on Martha's Vineyard. In Massachusetts some new history may be written with some beautiful performances and unique collaborations.
Tickets are available now, full details in the shows section of this website

[Edited: ALAS, THIS EVENT HAS BEEN CANCELLED] John Roderick will be one of the artists participating in Write Doe Bay, a unique writing workshop at the beautiful Doe Bay Resort and Retreat on Orcas Island, Washington. Write workshops aim to bridge genre gaps along the feather of storytelling, where songwriting presents as poetry, poetry as memoir and memoir as narrative song. 25 participants can join, and through shared meals and shared housing, a new vision for a writer’s retreat will take place.

Each edition has artists to stimulate the writing process, and this workshop will have five style-setters in music, poetry and nonfiction to push your creativity to new frontiers. Alongside John Roderick, this will be singer/songwriter Daniel Blue of Motopony, performance poet Matt Gano, biologist and author Thor Hanson, and author and blogger Matt Logelin.

Tickets are for sale now. The Write workshops fill up quickly, so don't wait too long, if you want to take part in this unique retreat.

photo by Michelle ShiersAt the end of the year looking back is the fashionable thing, so naturally we're inclined not to do so. But we do want to thank everyone for coming out to the When I Pretend to Fall shows in New York, Seattle, Los Angeles, San Francisco and Portland. With old and newer friends Sean Nelson, Michael Shilling, Andy Fitts, Nabil Ayers, Eric Corson and Chris Caniglia it was great fun to recreate When I Pretend to Fall and play some other songs for everyone who could attend.

If the prospect of Christmas feels slightly daunting, perhaps this will help: John Roderick and Jonathan Coulton sharing their take on the holidays in 10 original songs. If you missed out last year, here's where to catch up:One Christmas at a Time

The album includes 10 original Christmas songs (technically one is a Chanukah song), 8 of which were written just for this album by Jonathan Coulton and John Roderick, a super team of creative geniuses. There is also an original Jonathan Coulton song from Thing A Week and an original John Roderick song from a compilation he contributed to in 2004.

Sonic Boom Capitol Hill, 10 May 2003. Photo by Ryan SchierlingWhen one Seattle show was announced for The Long Winters performing When I Pretend to Fall in its entirety, one could only hope that this seemed like such a good idea that it wouldn't just remain this one show. Luckily, more shows have been added, but some don't seem to have made the front page yet, so here's a list of the Pretend to Fall shows:

In between reciting quotes from the video for Blue Diamonds ("Vous voulez un peu de crème glacée? Elle est très bonne.") and being in a limbo which original WIPFT band member to be most excited about to join the Long Winters on stage once more, we'll keep it short, so that you can get tickets for these shows before they're sold out.» Full details and links for tickets on the Shows page.